x.
 
I have bent back upon my life.
I have known I won’t survive
the leap from there to here.
 
 
x.
 
The girl with no face
perches
just behind my face. She squats
over the toilet, crusted panties
at her ankles, tissue pockmarked
with black blood
secreting
the silence inside each sentence,
each question on its knees…
 
 
x.
 
I live in the dark
a foot of glass
from her
 
The dark, plush as bedding
knowing me by name
 
I think therefore
she acts
sometime later
 
She’s an avatar, sent to interface
with the world of progress
 
 
x.
 
The weight of her gaze crushes my face
denatures my limbs my dropped smile sprays
concentric rings of piss
 
If I do not tuck in my thumbs my arms will fall off
 
 
x.
 
Who remembers the dead girl? Who remains to admit
she knows everything now? The taste of red vomit
and liquid charcoal: tomorrow’s revelation.
 
 
x.
 
I me my
grammar stitches
successive frames of consciousness
 
the gaps between
teem with little girls
whose tongues have eyes
 
 
x.
 
This brittle world, patches of bright and not
men and women lurching toward lurching away
inscrutable laws of motion
 
This brittle world as given
entreating distance to close
believing every scrap thrown
 
 
x.
 
Unstrung generations clatter to the floor
scatter from wall to wall, crash into and repulse
each other’s equal opposite
and what looms above
to pluck with finger and thumb
this one or that one this one or that one?
 
 
x.
 
air gone slack parade of living gush
too wide to wrap eyes and no face
anywhere no arms until I know that girl
 
 
x.
 
I died when they dragged me into the light.
 
The part that died in the light became my emblem.
 
I stood in my backstage and looked at my emblem.
 
I looked at what it takes to remember you.
 
 
x.
 
not here not here left gone from gone
wail wail cast chord catches on nothing
nothing wail same no wail daddy
skinhair hot foggy mirror in the hot
here and gone here is gone from me
 
 
x.
 
I could not have told you then you had to live
long enough to learn this ruined language